


star-crossed and blood-rushed

by tayttimus



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Nostalgia, Requited Pining, Rollerblades & Rollerskates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tayttimus/pseuds/tayttimus
Summary: An afternoon at the roller rink finds Yangyang and his friends crossing the path of Donghyuck and his.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Liu Yang Yang
Comments: 12
Kudos: 113





	star-crossed and blood-rushed

“Yo, Yangs!”

Yangyang startles out of his reverie. “Yah, I’m listening!”

Hendery snorts. “Okay, now, let’s not get crazy here. You were _not_ listening, you were staring at Lee Donghyuck’s ass hard enough he’s gonna limp home wondering who dicked him down so good.”

Yangyang’s face flares with indignant heat as Dejun and Yukhei laugh at the other end of the table. “Dude, stop,” he says, but it’s weak as hell and he’s burying his face in his hands.

Because, really, Hendery’s not wrong. Yangyang had been absolutely ignoring his friends’ discussions of what new machines the arcade down the street had just got, whether the new Michael Jackson album was worth the excitement, and if they were going to _actually_ roller skate at the rink or if that would make them look like posers. All in favour of watching Lee Donghyuck — campus heartthrob with his loose, carefully auburn curls to make any teen movie star jealous, his expressive eyes and tanned, smooth skin, and all those many moles trailing down his cheek and into the collars of the over-large shirts he wore — skate veritable circles around his friends on the hardwood of the rink. In Yangyang’s pitiful defense, Donghyuck had laughed loudly at some point and captured the attention of every patron in the entire establishment without trying, so Yangyang figured the initial distraction was forgivable.

“Seriously, man,” Yukhei drawls, the straw for the milkshake he’s sharing with Hendery hanging out of his mouth like a sprig of grass from a farmer’s might, “you’re gonna blow a gasket from how hard you’re staring Hyuckie down, just go talk to him.”

To his death, Yangyang will swear he doesn’t squeak. There isn’t really a good word to describe what he does otherwise, but Yangyang maintains that it’s a more dignified sound than a squeak. “I will _not_ be doing that, thank you _very_ much for your input, Xuxi!” he argues in an octave extremely unfamiliar to him.

Dejun is being kept from falling out of his seat by Hendery’s less-than-careful arms around his shoulders, but he just will not stop laughing, and it’s loud and obnoxious and if he doesn’t stop soon he’ll catch the attention of Donghyuck and his friends, and if that happens then _legally_ Yangyang cannot be held responsible for Dejun’s fate. “Oh, my god! You’re so fucking hopeless, Yang!”

“Shhh,” Hendery presses, a grin creeping up on his face that bodes ill for Yangyang’s entire existence. “Look, look! They’re coming over here, it’s your time, Yangie!”

“Shut up, shut _all the way_ up, you guys are such dipshits!” Yangyang hisses under his breath, fingers running anxiously through his highlighted locks.

Donghyuck rolls through with his crew, he and Renjun snapping cattily at each other, while Mark guides them both with hands on the smalls of their backs toward the snack counter. Jaemin is clung between Chenle and Jisung while they all but carry him forward, and Jeno lingers in the back, grinning placidly at his friends before cutting his eyes to Yangyang’s table with his own friends, smiling wider, and waving.

A beleaguered high school sophomore steps up to the counter in her gawky sailor outfit to take their orders, and Yangyang tears his eyes away from Donghyuck for the second time that afternoon when Dejun smacks the table. “What is your problem, Xiao?”

“Grab me a Pepsi, man,” he says, a snicker bubbling under his smile, echoed by Hendery burying his face in Yukhei’s shoulder.

“Get it yourself.”

“No, dude, I got the first order, it’s your turn! Go get me a Pepsi, come on!”

Yangyang looks at Dejun’s half-filled cup of Pepsi, then sneaks a glance over his shoulder to see none other than Donghyuck waving an empty plastic cup in the air and heading for the soda dispenser. In less than a heartbeat, Yangyang has his head in his hands over their table. “You fucker,” he starts.

Dejun grins like a wildcat and gazes over at the dispenser. “Well, if you insist that I get it myself, that’s fine or whatever. You know me, though. I’m pretty chatty by the soda dispenser. Woe betide any soul poor enough to find me by the soda dispenser at this here roller rink, in the middle of April, on a beautiful afternoon—”

“ _Alright_ , Xiao! Jesus.” Yangyang snatches the plastic cup Dejun scrambles to drain of its contents and stomps toward the dispenser. 

He does his level best not to fumble too much, but fails when he goes to punch the cup under the ice dispenser and Donghyuck chuckles out a “Got something against Pepsi-cola, big guy?” and Yangyang ends up leaving his hand there too long, far too much ice tumbling out and filling the cup in his hand in a flash.

“Guh,” Yangyang tries, between a hand frozen in midair as if he can scoop the ice back up the dispenser, and his eyes caught like a deer in the headlights on Donghyuck’s blinding smile. “Um. No?” He straightens, clears his throat, and tries not to wince as he fills the drip tray under the dispenser spouts with approximately half the contents of the icebox. “Just. Got my arm twisted into getting my friend his refill. Ha.”

Donghyuck giggles into his elbow, the bouncy curls haloing his face shaking with him. “You just have to get better at arm twisting in return. Only point in having friends is getting them to do you favours.”

Under the penumbra where the ultraviolet lights of the rink meet the fluorescent halogens of the snackbar, Donghyuck’s eyes twinkle like they contain every star that NASA has so far been able to document, and all the billions more they never will, and Yangyang can feel his heart beating out a kick-drum bass in his throat from how incredibly goddamn _pretty_ this boy before him looks.

The song over the speakers changes, and a whooping chorus ripples through the teens and young adults gathered around the rink as they clamber for the hardwood. Yangyang and Donghyuck watch as their respective friend groups abandon the spaces they’ve left them in. Mark tugs Renjun’s hand, Jisung lifts Chenle onto his back while Jaemin plays an accompanying rhythm on Chenle’s butt. Yukhei kisses Hendery’s cheek and whispers something there that has Hendery dragging Yukhei to the rink, and Jeno lags behind and grins disarmingly at Dejun.

“It would seem we have been abandoned,” Donghyuck comments, sipping noisily on his Pepsi.

“So it would seem,” Yangyang reflects.

There’s a brief moment where the air hangs still and the lights change as the old disco ball is dropped and rotating spotlights are shone on it’s mirrored surface. And Donghyuck steps toward the rink and the lights of the snack bar catch him on the edge of their rays, and Yangyang thinks for a moment that maybe his classical art studies should have taught him more about depictions of angels so he wouldn’t be so knocked off his feet by the appearance of one before him.

The air starts to move again and Donghyuck turns around with a shy little smile and his hands clasped behind his back, looking for all the world like he might be nervous. “Yangyang, would you like to go skate with me?”

And the whole of it is so stupidly romantic and absolutely normal as hell that Yangyang doesn’t even process that Donghyuck _does_ actually know his name, just reaches out a hand toward him and drifts into his space like two dandelion spores caught in the same eddy of wind.

Donghyuck takes his hand, his smile softening with ease and, maybe, relief? And he laces his fingers through Yangyang’s, and pulls him to the rink.

Slipping under the dark of the blacklight is like watching Donghyuck go from ethereal to beyond belief. On the rink, Donghyuck turns into a gull riding the gusts of wind rolling off the sea, easy and so comfortable nothing could move him. Yangyang doesn’t consider himself a bad skater, it’s just that he does a little better if his four wheels are under both his feet and connected to a plank of wood. But next to Donghyuck he looks like a baby deer learning to walk.

It’s easy and quiet between them as they get into the rhythm of the flow of other bodies on the hardwood, but Yangyang is hyper aware of where Donghyuck is still loosely clasping his hand. While Yangyang lags a little bit getting his skates under him, Donghyuck gets fancier with his footwork, crossing his feet over each other and worming little curves toward and away Yangyang’s body next to his.

Eventually, with a careful look into his eyes and a grin that eased all and more of Yangyang’s worries, Donghyuck slips his fingers out from between Yangyang’s own and begins to literally skate circles around him. Laughter bubbles up in Yangyang’s chest, and he watches Donghyuck angle his body and arrange his feet under him with such confidence and ease. “You know,” Donghyuck says quietly, but still heard over the music because Yangyang isn’t sure he’d ever be able to miss a word Donghyuck says, “I was so nervous to ask you to skate.”

Yangyang stumbles, pitching forward with his arms pinwheeling and his fingers brushing the rink’s surface to keep himself upright, and he feels hands under his arms that haul him into standing back up. “What?” Yangyang asks dumbly into Donghyuck’s face, the two of them now so close it’s unbearable, Donghyuck holding Yangyang by the elbows and skating backwards in front of him, keeping him upright. Distantly, he thinks he might hear Yukhei and Hendery laughing somewhere else on the rink, but it’s entirely unimportant right now.

Because Donghyuck is giggling again, but instead of hiding it in his elbow like before, he’s hiding it almost in Yangyang’s shoulder and his curls are bouncing with the shaking of his chest again, and Yangyang wonders what the rink’s health and safety protocols might be in the event of a patron vomiting their still-beating heart on the hardwood. When Donghyuck looks back up, the night sky is back in his eyes. “I’ve been working up the nerve to ask you to skate with me for weeks, Liu Yangyang. I was sure you must have felt my eyes on you.”

“Okay,” Yangyang says, definitive, “if anyone should be feeling the weight of my gaze, and I mean that in the sense of my eyesight and in the sense of my homosexual tendencies, it should really be you.”

Donghyuck tips his head back and laughs loud, long, and beautifully, the long curve of his neck exposed under the shifting lights of the disco ball. “Man, what?”

Yangyang has the grace to look sheepish. “I don’t fucking know. When I get nervous I have absolutely no control over what comes out of my mouth, the filter gets obliterated.”

A grin splits Donghyuck’s face and Yangyang feels his own mirror it. “Alright, then. What does a filter-less Yangyang say when a nervous Donghyuck tells him he likes him?”

It’s hard to focus on anything as Donghyuck pulls Yangyang’s arms forward by his elbows, wrapping them around his waist as he slots his skates on either side of Yangyang’s and pulls them into a very tight, very controlled spin.

“He says... It’s a good thing you do, or I might have died from this unrequited crush.”

His arms are already around Yangyang’s neck, so it’s unbelievable easy for Donghyuck to pull him down into a quick, nervous, chaste kiss. “Consider the crush requited,” he whispers against Yangyang’s lips.

Across the rink, Dejun hoots, one hand cupped around his mouth for the sound to carry, the other firmly grasping one of Jeno’s. They’re stepping off and toward a larger table in the sitting area that Donghyuck’s friends had nabbed, beckoning their two friends to join them.

But in the middle of the rink and under the shifting lights mirrored down on them, Yangyang lets Donghyuck orbit him and considers himself lucky to be the centre of the sun’s world for even a brief moment.

**Author's Note:**

> i was listening to the midnight's new album on loop last night and slapped this baby together with a bit of nostalgia for a decade i never saw. to fellow hags: please forgive any 70's/80's inaccuracies and suspend your disbelief please.
> 
> as always, find me on twitter [here](http://www.twitter.com/COOPERlFIC) for more writing, [here](http://www.twitter.com/tayttimus) for general obnoxiousness, or ask me things [here](http://www.curiouscat.me/tayttimus) on curiouscat.


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